such a master of art and expression, might
bear with them the danger fabled in the mingled beauty and horror of the
Gorgon's head.

George Sand was saved by the sincerity of her intention. Her somnambulic
utterances had told of her good faith, and of her belief in things truly
human and divine. Her revolutionary indignation was against the really
false and base, and her progress was to a position from which she was
able calmly to analyze and loftily to repudiate the disorders in which
she was supposed to have lost for a time the sustaining power of reason
and self-command.

To those of us who remember these things in the vividness of their
living presence, it is most satisfactory to be assured of the excellence
of Margaret's judgment. The great Frenchwoman, at the period of which we
write, appeared to many the incarnation of all the evil which her sex
could represent. To those of opposite mind she appeared the inspired
prophetess of a new era of thought and of sentiment. To Margaret she was
neither the one nor the other. Much as she loved genius, that of George
Sand could not blind her to the faults and falsities that marred her
work. Stern idealist as she was, the most objectionable part of Madame
Sand's record could not move her to a moment's injustice or uncharity in
her regard.

In "Woman in the Nineteenth Century" Margaret says:--

"George Sand smokes, wears male attire, wishes to be addressed as _mon
frere_. Perhaps, if she found those who were as brothers indeed, she
would not care whether she were brother or sister."

And concerning her writings:--

"This author, beginning like the many in assault upon bad institutions
and external ills, yet deepening the experience through comparative
freedom, sees at last that the only efficient remedy must come from
individual character.

"The mind of the age struggles confusedly with these problems, better
discerning as yet the ill it can no longer bear than the good by which
it may supersede it. But women like Sand will speak now, and cannot be
silenced; their characters and their eloquence alike foretell an era
when such as they shall easier learn to lead true lives. But though such
forebode, not such shall be parents of it. Those who would reform the
world must show that they do not speak in the heat of wild impulse;
their lives must be unstained by passionate error. They must be
religious students of the Divine purpose with regard to man, if they
would not conf